Pho House

This place recently opened up in the vacant spot occupying this once busy area of a Blockbuster parking lot- now a Budget Blinds and misc. It's been very cold recently, and hot soup will definitely fill and make you right.

Not a huge Pho fan myself, but my boyfriend is, we ventured here to give it a try compared to our spot at Pasteur's. The one thing to mention is my boyfriend's family was raised in Vietnam, even if they are Chinese through and through. His Mom is fluent in vietnamese, mandarin, and cantonese- and enjoys both cuisines as well... might say she prefers vietnamese more. So we have a good history of what we like as far as Pho goes.

They close at 9pm, and apparently on the dot. Sometimes Pho places will stay an hour later, but only for family. The two women taking care of the Pho House were prompt and ready, even when we weren't. We got there a little before 8:30 and easily ordered a small bowl of Pho Tai for me, and the House Pho for my BF. The House pho is the works, tendons, tripe, questionable meatballs, and fatty meat. He loves it, and as long as I don't stare at it I'm fine.

When we arrived, the hostess was with another customer, and only asked if we were eating in. We took a seat, looked at the menu, and identified what we wanted. We don't get drinks usually, and she didn't ask us, but brought over two glasses with ice water and straws. Not your normal plastic beat up pizzeria looking cups either. The venue is small, but quaint and comfortable. The walls aren't stark white, and the decor is very pleasant and not heavily asian influenced. It didn't scream "I'm a Pho Restaurant."
Most Pho restaurants I feel cold in. Their decor is dark, glass tables with black metal chairs, white linens, white linoleum floors. I can imagine this being a plus in vietnam where it's hot all the time, but in Washington, it sure is a downer. This restaurant though was extremely pleasant to sit in. Other than having my back to the door and several people going in and out for pick up orders, that was the only feeling of coldness I got.
Not to say this restaurant didn't have glass table tops, and ours kept slipping, the rest of the atmosphere was pleasant enough to totally forget it all. Or maybe I was just totally comfortable and enjoying my pho tai. I think the latter.

Menu first- it's readable and not 5 bajillion pages of who knows what! It's very simple, and even has the appetizer I like! Usually I have to squeeze this out of staff, and once I visited a pho place in Vegas- and they had no idea what I was talking about!! It's a simple skewer or charcoaled pork with green onions and peanuts on it. It's greasy and yummy :) I don't know the Vietnamese name for it, and they were just labeled as pork or chicken skewers. I didn't order these, another time though.

They brought out or pho, and I had asked for extra limes, which they didn't provide. But gave us four slices, enough I guess. We don't add a lot to our pho, just lime. Which is the great thing about pho, people can customize it however they want to. So everyone has their own opinion how good pho is. You just want to make sure you like your basic Pho first before you add things.

We once went to a Pho restaurant recommended to us by a friend, Pho Kim. Only to find their Pho was sweet! Abundantly so. This usually means they're from or close to Laos, who prefer their food on the sweeter side of things.
To our delight, this was a fairly classic pho, with a bit of sweet. Not excessive. Just right. The noodles were a hunk of tangled mess I had to slosh about with my chopsticks to be able to get some into my mouth. My one super favorite thing was the meat. Still pink from setting it into the broth- the way it's supposed to- I found the meat extremely flavorful and tasty. It was tender and easy to chew, digestible! Other places are really fatty, connective tissue-y, or super dry and shrivel. Their beef was extremely pleasant and I ate it all. To my BF's surprise I pretty much finished off my bowl. He desecrated his. Overall, we had no complaints, it was a good bowl of Pho and we'll go back to try other things when we're in the area.